March 7, 2010

"Cultivating Confidence"

Psalm 63:1-8

1 Corinthians 10:1-13

Reverend Bill Nickels

Well, to be perfectly frank, friends, my reflections this morning are likely to be briefer than they usually are… because preaching on temptation is… difficult for me. 

I mean, I hardly know what to say because… it’s so seldom that I’m tempted… or that I desire any kind of evil.  I mean… 

Idolatry?  I’m never troubled by idolatry.  Not any of my own, that is. 

Now, your idolatries?  Well, they do get to me.                                                            (I really hate it when my god’s ignored or dishonored.)                   

And immorality?  Hey, I’m a preacher, a man of the cloth. 

You don’t think I’m tempted to engage in the sort of sins that other people get mixed up in, do you?                                      

Hardly.  And, I’m rather proud of that. 

Testing God?  No way!  Why, if I’m guilty of testing the Lord, let him make that clear to me.                   

And grumbling?  What would I have to grumble about? 

Just because God never saw fit to call me to that prominent pulpit up in Raleigh… well, I’m certainly not going to grumble over something like that.                                       

You see, temptation is just so far outside of my everyday experience, I’m not sure I can speak to it with much authority.  

So this is likely to be brief… unless something surface out of the scripture we read.  Otherwise, I doubt I’ll be up there long. 

Well, friends… I suppose you get the picture.  I hope you caught the irony in my voice the past couple of minutes. 

The truth is, you and I both face very real and extremely challenging temptations all the time, every day. 

Temptations to idolatry and immorality, testing and grumbling and to all sorts of other things, as well.            

Honestly, I know plenty about temptation.  And so do you. 

And not just here (head) but also here (body)… in our experience.  

We face temptations not because we are bad, immoral or broken, but because we’re alive as the people we are… as the persons God has created us to be… in the world where God has placed us.  

If it wasn’t possible for us to worship idols…  

if we’d been made without a capacity for that…  

if we’d been hardwired so that we could only worship Almighty God (the way we’re hardwired so that we have to breathe to live)…  

well then we would not be tempted to idolatry.  

But that’s not how we’ve been made.  It not how the world’s been set up.      

And if it were how we’d been made, we would be different creatures than we are.  

Made as we have been, with a capacity to choose to trust God or not, to obey God or not, to seek God or to try to hide from God, temptation’s beyond being a possibility for us.           

It is beyond even probability. 

It’s a condition of existence, common to us all… unless we’re in circumstances in which we have no choice, such as being in a coma.    

Sometimes, given all of this, we experience temptation as rising and overtaking us.                   

I picture it like a bank of fog… flowing in and enveloping me.  

It could be that we’re overtaken by the temptation to trust, not God, but ourselves, or something other than God. 

Though it also could be that we’re overtaken by the temptation to trust God. (I once preached a sermon entitled, On Being Strongly Tempted To Be Christian.)           

Temptation lives in the crucible of human choice.                   

It did for the people of Israel in the wilderness.                                                            It did for Jesus.                                                                                                                It does for us all.  

When we choose poorly, unwisely, unfaithfully, it yields harm in our lives… morally, emotionally, physically sometimes, and spiritually.                  

And it may very well, very often, affect others, too, for ill. 

-         the one for whom sex becomes a god may tear the fabric of his or her family’s life asunder.  

No wonder… given the harm that often ensues… no wonder God is not pleased.            

God wants good for us all, not evil.  

But, we also can choose well and wisely and faithfully.   

And when we do that, it yields blessing.  As I’m sure you, happily, know.   

While it may be neither fun nor easy for us to have to face temptation (and we must), being tempted can do us quite a bit of good. 

Just as you make a knife sharper by grinding it against a sharpening stone, so too, by wrestling through temptation to a choice for God, or against some immorality, your spirit gets honed and sharpened.   

As you reinforce your devotion to God, it tends to open you to receiving even more holy help for your struggles.           

Not a bad thing!  

I’m sure that as Christ labored through his wilderness temptations, he received quite a bit of help along the way.    

As I reflect upon Paul’s words to us in the scripture we’ve considered this morning, I see that there is something surfacing that I want to be sure you get. 

It is that crucial, critical assurance Paul offered to the Corinthians and to every other Christian facing the challenges of daily and hourly temptation:                   

Paul acknowledges that temptation’s a reality we all face. 

But he then makes it clear that God is faithful (not some of the time, but always; not only toward some but toward all.)   

It is God’s nature, intention, and ongoing accomplishment to be faithful. 

God is faithful… faithful to us. 

Having made us capable of being tempted (and therefore ensuring that we’ll face some difficult choices), God has not left us on our own. 

God has not abandoned us to flap like a flag in stormwinds… until we’re reduced to shreds.          

Rather, God maintains a face of faithfulness toward us. 

God continues to be for us as we, sometimes, fight our way through our temptation-choices…  

And even when we miss the mark, God extends saving love toward us… the forgiveness made ours in Jesus Christ, the Way… the way of escape!... …

the final way, when it’s that great depth of darkness and despair and failure to which we’ve fallen. 

God extends saving love toward us in Christ… the Way, the Truth, the Life… and the proof of how faithful indeed God is to us!  

That faithfulness, God’s faithfulness, gives us confidence… great confidence in God… as we manage our temptations.          

It gives us great help.   

Eugene Peterson translates Paul’s exhortation in words I now will leave you with.  After pointing out how Israel in the wilderness made mistakes, Paul urges his readers to recognize that: 

Our positions in the story are parallel – they at the beginning, we at the end – and we are just as capable of messing up as they were.   

Don’t be so naïve and self-confident.  You’re not exempt.  You could fall flat on your face as easily as anyone.   

Forget about self-confidence.  Cultivate God-confidence…  

No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face.   

All you need to remember is that God will never let you down.  He’ll never let you be pushed past your limit; he’ll always be there to help you come through it.   

Friends, look to God as you live through your temptations.   

And keep an eye and a heart out for others facing them, so that you can offer them encouragement as well; through Jesus Christ our Lord.